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Should you invest your RRSP in real estate?

More investors are flirting with the idea of using their RRSP to pump into real estate opportunities. It sounds great on paper, but is that easy to access your funds?

Video transcript below:

Reporter: Using your RRSP to invest in real estate is encouraged, but the perceived restrictions and paperwork deter many. Is it really that difficult to access your funds and is this the best route for you? We find out in this week’s episode of Investor Insight on CREW TV.

Using RRSPs to invest in real estate is nothing new. But it is only now that the average investor is doing it. Why are investors so afraid of using this strategy? And are there any truths to the bad stories?

Seane Greene, Owner, Platinum Investment GroupSeane Greene: Some of the fears they encounter or misconceptions are the fact that they believe they have to go back to their existing financial manager to move these funds or to go another type of investment company that can manage them for them. That’s actually not correct. There are many ways to move your money from one RSP company to another. It’s very easy, so I think again one of the misconceptions that are out there for most investors are that it’s a very technical detailed event for them to have to try and go and move these funds and set up these new accounts and I can say from personal experience and personal knowledge, because I have been doing this myself personally for over 15 years, is that it’s only gotten easier to obtain your own RSPs self directed accounts and move your money the way you want to move it or move it to, institutions in which you would like to have your money moved to.

Reporter: If it is so easy, then why are the big banks telling small investors this strategy is out of their reach?

Seane Greene: The current investment companies, the big banks and I say investment companies, the investment banks, the large mutual funds and REITs, I think traditionally they have made it seem to the average investor that this is above their scope, it’s very technical, you don’t understand it and I think they’ve been very good at keeping the average investor at bay feeling that they can’t make any of these decisions on their own, but again that couldn’t be any farther from the truth, what is actually available out there to the average investor today.